148
votes
Accepted
Does this video show a water droplet in gravitational orbit?
The GIF was sourced from the International Space Station video by astronaut Don Pettit. The video depicts small water droplets orbiting a polyethylene knitting needle which was charged by rubbing it ...
- 18.5k
115
votes
Accepted
Are the claims made by Indian Ministers / personalities regarding ancient Indian inventions true?
Genetic science in Mahabharata
Prime Minister Modi claimed that genetic science and plastic surgery existed in Ancient India.
source: “We all read about Karna in the Mahabharata. If we think a little ...
- 39.4k
106
votes
Accepted
Did the British navy fail to take into account the ballistics correction due to Coriolis force during WW1 Falkland Islands battle?
No. It is a complete invention of an urban myth.
Unless anybody produces a Royal Navy document that even does any mention of this influence of Coriolis effect, this seems to be just untrue. A ...
- 43.4k
95
votes
Accepted
Does Kasardevi, India, have an enormous geomagnetic field because of the Van Allen Belt?
The claims are two wrong, one sort of correct
Before we start, it might be worth noting though that a strong magnetic field is more likely to keep radiation out than letting it in (*).
Anyway, the ...
- 11k
92
votes
Accepted
Antistatic bracelet without a ground connection
No, it is not true
On the Wikipedia page on "Antistatic Device" there were several references to these kinds of things having been examined in a serious manner.
ESD Journal
It is our ...
- 11k
86
votes
Accepted
Do wooden building fires get hotter than 600°C?
Without acknowledging any of the conditions actually present in the church, wood fires can get much hotter than 600 °C.
The maximum temperatures measured within the pile were of the order of ...
- 43.4k
80
votes
Accepted
Will a bullet be split in half if it hits a butter knife that is fixed in place?
In the television show Penn and Teller Tell A Lie, a competitor to Mythbusters, they conduct an experiment to try this.
Here is a YouTube video of the result.
In the single instance they show with a ...
- 133k
78
votes
Accepted
Has the laser at Magurele, Romania reached a tenth of the Sun's power?
It's possible they are actually talking about the rate of energy given off by the Sun that reaches the Earth. However, they are not talking about the amount of energy released, but rather the rate of ...
- 21.7k
65
votes
Does GPS use General Relativity?
Yes, GPS requires both general and special relativity to work
[Note this is simplified account based on this and this (MS word download)]
We can understand why by looking at how GPS actually ...
- 54.7k
56
votes
Accepted
Did the Quran predict the speed of light?
TL;DR : No, even if one chooses to interpret the excerpt of the Qur'an as such, the maths don't hold up
I am going to base this answer on your second source, as the calculation there is reduced to the ...
- 2,492
55
votes
Accepted
Do snowballs snowball?
Only when the snow is "wet", not if the snow is powdery.
As this January 1910 Watson Wagon advertisement says:
The popularity of the Watson continues to grow like a snowball rolling down hill ...
- 98.2k
55
votes
Do wooden building fires get hotter than 600°C?
Probably yes: According to at least one expert, the temperature in the Notre Dame fire must have been extremely high, and probably exceeded 600°C.
Yesterday the Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany's ...
- 8,465
54
votes
Accepted
Does wetting a beer glass change the foam characteristics?
In 1953, a paper looking at some of the factors involved in beer foam answered this question almost as an incidental aside.
Jackson, S. (1953). FACTORS AFFECTING BEER FOAM I. CARBON DIOXIDE EVOLUTION....
- 133k
53
votes
Accepted
Did Benjamin Franklin perform an experiment by flying a kite in a lightning storm?
There is Frankin's letter of Oct 1 1752 saying that the kite experiment was performed successfully in Philadelphia, which was read to and published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal ...
- 13.3k
47
votes
Accepted
Did a lightning strike make a river roll and boil?
This is not a lightning strike. It's an underwater blasting explosion
Snopes covered this a few days ago. Here's the article. The video was originally posted to YouTube in 2012 to host it for this ...
- 2,101
44
votes
Accepted
Did Albert Einstein say "the only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once"?
The oldest confirmed use of any version of this quote that I was able to find is from Ray Cummings' short story The Time Professor, published in the Jan. 8, 1921 issue of Argosy All-Story Weekly (...
- 556
42
votes
Accepted
Did George Biddell Airy write a paper "On Certain conditions under which a Perpetual Motion is possible"?
The claim that George Biddell Airy wrote a paper titled “On certain Conditions under which Perpetual Motion is possible” which was published in the Transactions of the Cambridge Philosophical Society ...
40
votes
Accepted
Is it safe to stand by the windows during a thunderstorm?
It's not just your culture. Advice from the US National Weather Service includes:
Stay away from windows and doors, and stay off porches.
The answer to this related question (including the ...
- 1,912
38
votes
Has the laser at Magurele, Romania reached a tenth of the Sun's power?
Power of the laser
This video shows interviews with people at the laser center. At 4:54 you can see the director of the center repeat the claim. In this video, that same director states that the ...
- 12k
34
votes
Do snowballs snowball?
I would have to say, yes, it does, but as evidence, one looks not at the scenario described of rolling a snowball down a hill.
Instead, in a snowy area, after a significant snowfall and, especially, ...
- 9,368
34
votes
Did the British navy fail to take into account the ballistics correction due to Coriolis force during WW1 Falkland Islands battle?
Rudolph Verner, the gunnery officer of the Inflexible, which took part in the battle, wrote a short set of notes about the successes and difficulties encountered during the engagement. He writes
...
- 11.1k
31
votes
Accepted
Did Manahel Thabet develop a groundbreaking formula to measure distance in space without the use of light?
Did Manahel Thabet develop a groundbreaking formula to measure distance in space without the use of light?
NO! This extraordinary claim which came from Wikipedia:
In 2012, Thabet developed a ...
- 29.8k
30
votes
Accepted
Did astronauts leave footprints on the moon?
People have stepped on the Moon when they went there and left footprints, so we've plenty of photographic evidence of their footsteps on the Moon.
In fact, it turns out that people do leave footprint ...
- 78k
28
votes
Did all iron on Earth come from outer space?
TL;DR
The majority of the Earth's iron was around when the planet formed. Calculations of the mass deposited by subsequent impacts show that these impacts were comparatively insignificant in changing ...
- 11.1k
28
votes
Do wooden building fires get hotter than 600°C?
Wood is a perfectly acceptable and common material used in metal forging even more so when it becomes partially combusted (charcoal). What really determines the heat though, is the amount of oxygen ...
- 381
27
votes
Accepted
Does sleeping naked in a sleeping bag keep you warmer?
No
It's a system
Consider the clothes and the sleeping bag to comprise a "sleeping system"...
The functional demand on a sleeping system is to enable the user to
obtain a specified period ...
- 14.9k
27
votes
Accepted
Is Starlite a hoax?
I'll attempt to answer this in accordance with the meta post How should unfalsifiable claims be handled?.
Bobson pointed out an interesting article from The Telegraph entitled "Starlite, the nuclear ...
- 11.1k
26
votes
Did Manahel Thabet develop a groundbreaking formula to measure distance in space without the use of light?
Classmates.com lists her, with a photograph, as having attended a "DePaul Academy, Chicago IL" from 1992-1996 for high school.
There was a DePaul Academy high school in Chicago that closed ...
- 98.2k
26
votes
Do trackers hold their ears to the ground?
According to the 1832 book Six Months in America, volume II, at page 67:
At certain seasons of the year, their tramping and bellowing may be heard at a vast distance on the plains, by putting the ...
- 98.2k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible